The present invention is related to a photosensitive material magazine for accommodating an elongated photosensitive material which has already been taken up in a layered configuration, and more, a photoprinting apparatus for printing an image on the photosensitive material after it has been drawn out of the photosensitive material magazine.
In photoprinting apparatuses is a multiplicity of print channels are prepared beforehand. The amount of exposure is controlled to finish a well-color-balanced printed photograph with an appropriate concentration by determining a coefficient or a constant by an exposure quantity arithmetic formula in accordance with the selected print channel. This print channel is determined by a combination of paper balance, lens balance and film balance. The paper balance representing a type of photographic printing paper is determined by a combination of sensitivity, type of emulsion, surface type or maker, and the manufacturer's serial number. The lens balance, indicating a type of lens is determined by a combining a printing magnification and an aperture F-value. The film balance indicates the type of photographic film, e.g., color negative film is determined by a combination of the maker, sensitivity and size.
There are, however, some problems inherent in the conventional photoprinting device, wherein paper balance is manually inputted by operating an operation panel when changing the paper magazine accommodating the printing paper. This inputting process becomes troublesome as well as sometimes causing a mistake in operation.
Under such circumstances, an apparatus was proposed (See Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 62-106448) arranged such that when the paper magazine is loaded, paper balance information indicating the type of printing paper which is represented by a combination of bar codes and rugged elements at a port unit formed in the paper magazine is automatically read, and printing conditions of the printer are varied in accordance with the information. This apparatus eliminates the necessity for manual operation, and hence operability is improved.
However, a drawback to such a construction is, though there is no possibility in which the printing paper packed therein is unidentified with the representation thereof in the case of the occupied magazine being conceived as a packaging container or a dedicated magazine. The mischarging of printing paper or a failure to rewrite the representation, resulting in a mistake of indication. Consequently, the printing conditions are mistakenly set.
On the other hand, according to a known technique (RESEARCH DISCLOSURE April 1980 No. 192 19223 Photographic film coding) of specifying film characteristics such as film speed, film type, effective period, sensitivity and latitude, binary codes representing such characteristics are expressed in the form of combinations of bored and non-bored portions along edges of a 35 mm roll film between sprockets at the edges thereof. There was proposed an arrangement where the above-mentioned technique is applied to display the information on printing paper, wherein a top part of the printing paper is formed with punch marks expressed in such a format that numerals set for respective items of photosensitive property, paper quality, maker and size can be converted into electric signals; and a process optimal to the type of printing paper is effected in accordance with the data stored beforehand by automatically reading the mark (See Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 62-286040). With this arrangement, the printing paper information is written on the printing paper itself. This in turn causes no mistake of indication even if reloading is effected.
Based on this construction, however, the printing paper information is be set at the top part alone. Therefore, the printing paper information can not be obtained when replacing the working magazine with another magazine filled with a different type of printing paper and reusing the printing paper which is en route for consumption, if a middle part of the printing paper turns out to be the top thereof. Hence, some device is needed to make the charged printing paper correspond to the magazine